Putting affected people at the centre of humanitarian action: an argument for the principle of humanitarian subsidiarity

The humanitarian system has grown organically over the course of a generation to become a complex system bound by a common primary mandate. Its guiding principles provide it with a unique identity and separate humanitarian actors from other aid-related stakeholders. However, all of the evidence suggests that humanitarian actors will extend their reach and engage in new and unprecedented ways with an expanded mandate in years to come. Now, more than ever, they are challenged to retain the moral high ground and to put disaster-affected people at the centre of humanitarian action. Consequently, this paper proposes that the humanitarian system introduce a new principle: humanitarian subsidiarity. It moves the conception of subsidiarity beyond meanings ascribed by the Catholic Church and the European Union and links it instead to the attributes of agency, accountability, and trust to find accommodation with the core humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence.     

虚拟水战略:拯救民勤绿洲的新思路

位于甘肃石羊河下游的民绿洲，水资源极度缺乏，生产、生活和生态用水矛盾突出，出现了严重的生态危机，其中湖区的生态经济系统已呈“崩溃”之势。拯救民勤绿洲成为社会广泛关注的重大问题。“虚拟水”是20世纪90年代初Tony Allan提出的一个新概念，虚拟水战略是指贫水区域通过贸易的方式从富水地区购进水资源密集型产品来获得本区水资源安全的一种构想。本文通过对节水、调水、移民等常规方案与虚拟水战略的对比分析后，认为虚拟水战略是拯救民勤绿洲的一个全新思路，探讨了虚拟水战略实施的政策建议；提出了创新区域水资源管理体制和区域经济发展思路以及建立国家生态补偿机制的主张。     

灾难危急时刻的管理

灾难危急时刻的管理往往是出乎于原有的抗灾计划的。研究发现,成功的灾害管理主要来源于应急组织的作用,特别是当管理中存在着信息交流、职权行使和协调发展等方面的问题时更是如此。事先的救灾计划可以减少但却不能完全消除这些管理上的问题。     

武汉市大旅游网络建设研究

从地理位置、对外经济联系、国内和省内经济地位、旅游资源丰度等方面分析了武汉市发展旅游事业的有利条件；论证了建设以武汉市为中心，向郊区（县）、省内和邻省延伸的旅游网络的必要性和可行性及发展国际旅游的潜力；提出了大力加强景点和基础设施建设，改善周边交通条件，壮大地方航空公司等加快旅游业发展的对策和措施。     

保护水资源珍惜水资源

中国现在面临的水资源危机一方面是资源性缺水，另一方面是水质性缺水。保护、珍惜水资源，防污治污迫在眉睫。本文介绍了中国水资源匮乏的情况和节水防污的措施。     

The African food crisis of 1982-1986*

The crisis cannot be attributed to any one cause, but rather it was the product of a number of interacting factors whose precise combination varied between countries. Drought, internal political and economic factors and an unfavourable external economic environment were significant contributory factors. Civil war and externally financed insurgency were primarily responsible for propelling a food crisis into a famine in four out of the six worst affected countries. Within the literature, there is a tendency for writers to emphasize the relative contribution of factors within their own disciplines. So far the literature on the responses, both within country and internationally, is comprised of eye witness accounts by journalists and evaluations by aid agencies of their performance. The international response by governments and the public was massive and unprecedented, but the response by governments, indigenous NGO's and the public within affected countries is often overlooked by the journalistic literature. Generalizations about "the African food crisis" have obscured the considerable diversity amongst countries. This is well illustrated by the experiences of Ethiopia, Kenya and Botswana. This diversity indicates the biased perspectives that arise from focussing on the extreme famines, as in Ethiopia. Research priorities should include studies of systems that coped during the crisis, historical analysis of the crisis, the way early warning information is processed within bureaucratic institutions, environmental degradation and fully integrated analysis of food production and consumption systems.     

Debt-for-nature swaps: an overview

SUMMARY

The debt crisis of developing countries in the early 1980s has been linked with environmental degradation. In order to combat the debt and environmental crisis, debt-for-nature swap transactions were proposed by Lovejoy in 1984. They involve a mechanism of exchange in which a certain amount of the debtor's foreign debt is cancelled or forgiven, in return for local currency from the debtor government to be invested in a domestic environmental protection project. The swaps may involve two governments, and in most cases, are aided by an International Non-Governmental Organization (INGO), who must have a local contact with a domestic NGO. The first swap (1987), between Bolivia and Conservation International (US-INGO) involved cancellation of $650 000 Bolivian foreign debt for exchange of $100 000 worth of local currency to be used towards the Beni Biosphere Reserve. Since 1987, swaps have resulted in an excess of US$1.5 billion in transactions. Debt-for-nature swaps may not provide debt relief of significant magnitude nor solve the world's environmental or conservation problems, they have enabled provision of additional funding to ailing environmental organizations (more than $100 million), raised a sense of awareness about environmental protection, and some environments especially in Costa Rica are benefiting from the process.     

肺炎疫情期间医护人员心理危机干预效果分析

为提升医护人员心理健康水平,该文对肺炎疫情期间医护人员实施心理危机干预并分析其效果,以参与2020年1月25日-2月25日湖北省武汉市新冠肺炎疫情期间救治工作的300名医护人员作为研究对象,平均划分为实验组和对照组,其中针对实验组实施统一的心理危机干预训练,此期间对照组未参与训练但日常生活与实验组统一,选取四种量表分别对干预前后的两组实施测评。测评结果表明,干预后实验组的SCL-90各因子得分、SDS得分及SAS得分较干预前均下降明显,且下降幅度超过对照组;实验组干预后的GQOLI总得分与各维度得分均较干预前显著升高,且升高幅度高于对照组。综上,心理危机干预可显著提升医护人员的心理健康水平,缓解其心理紧张等症状,能够在一定程度上降低肺炎疫情期间医护人员的心理危机感。     

Beyond performance and protocols: early responders' experiences of multiple accountability demands in the response to the 2015 Nepal earthquake

Critics have long questioned the push for professionalised and performance‐driven accountability in the humanitarian sector, yet the matter is largely treated as a ‘back office’ issue of standards, guidelines, and processes. Scant attention is paid to the accountability demands experienced by early responders to disasters. Set in the contested climate of the emergency response to the earthquake in Nepal on 25 April 2015, and drawing on interviews with 15 early responders, this paper reveals three forms of accountability demands: (i) accountability as compliance; (ii) accountability as the object of government regulation; and (iii) accountability as public opposition and interrogation. Beyond the performance‐centric, non‐governmental organisation‐driven understanding of accountability, early responders to the earthquake experienced multidirectional accountability demands, not only from donors and beneficiaries, but also from the national government and wider public. Engaging with public criticism is a significant feature of early responders' responsibility that warrants further consideration by the humanitarian community.     

A Matrix‐Calibrated Species‐Area Model for Predicting Biodiversity Losses Due to Land‐Use Change

Abstract: Application of island biogeography theory to prediction of species extinctions resulting from habitat loss is based on the assumption that the transformed landscape matrix is completely inhospitable to the taxa considered, despite evidence demonstrating the nontrivial influence of matrix on populations within habitat remnants. The island biogeography paradigm therefore needs refining to account for specific responses of taxa to the area of habitat “islands” and to the quality of the surrounding matrix. We incorporated matrix effects into island theory by partitioning the slope (z value) of species–area relationships into two components: γ, a constant, and σ, a measure of taxon‐specific responses to each component of a heterogeneous matrix. We used our matrix‐calibrated model to predict extinction and endangerment of bird species resulting from land‐use change in 20 biodiversity hotspots and compared these predictions with observed numbers of extinct and threatened bird species. We repeated this analysis with the conventional species–area model and the countryside species–area model, considering alternative z values of 0.35 (island) or 0.22 (continental). We evaluated the relative strength of support for each of the five candidate models with Akaike's information criterion (AIC). The matrix‐calibrated model had the highest AIC weight (w_i = 89.21%), which means the weight of evidence in support of this model was the optimal model given the set of candidate models and the data. In addition to being a valuable heuristic tool for assessing extinction risk, our matrix‐calibrated model also allows quantitative assessment of biodiversity benefits (and trade‐offs) of land‐management options in human‐dominated landscapes. Given that processes of secondary regeneration have become more widespread across tropical regions and are predicted to increase, our matrix‐calibrated model will be increasingly appropriate for practical conservation in tropical landscapes.